


i am the swift uplifting rush

by radianceofthefuture



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Afterlife, Barricade Day, Barricade Day 2018, Canon Compliant, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 17:58:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14857503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radianceofthefuture/pseuds/radianceofthefuture
Summary: He remembers a wash of brilliant light. It was a feeling of melting, expanding, until he was more than he’d been previously, until he was everything and nothing all at once.Whenever there is a struggle for justice, Enjolras is there.





	i am the swift uplifting rush

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first of two unrelated pieces I’ve been working on for Barricade Day. The next one is soft, sweet modern AU bullshit, but I’m giving you this one first.

He’s sure there was pain; there must have been pain, but he doesn’t remember it. He remembers only what came before and after.

He remembers a wash of brilliant light. It was a feeling of melting, expanding, until he was more than he’d been previously, until he was everything and nothing all at once.

And he knows what he is now.

He is a whisper of an idea, a tingling, urgent feeling in the bones. He is the haunted eyes of those who have walked out of hell, and their strong, pulsing undercurrent of strength. He is a shout in the street. He is all that has ever been, and all that can ever be.

When an idea takes root in the consciousness, when a throng on the street shake their fists at the sky, when anyone, anywhere, stands up and says: this isn’t right, Enjolras is there.

He is there when a man in the southernmost corner of humanity walks free after twenty-seven years. He is there when a shot glass hits a mirror in a heady bar and releases a mass of people through the cracks. He is there when a small island nation wins a deathless revolution, and he is there a century after his time when his homeland is liberated from the grasp of yet another tyrant.

He knows his friends, the brave, beautiful souls who stood beside him, are there, too. He can feel them even when he doesn’t see them. When the angel of the battlefield beats back death, Combeferre is there to help her bear her cross. He catches a glimpse of Bahorel’s scarlet waistcoat in the crowd at Haymarket Square, and when the people of the world see they must band together to escape being torn apart, Courfeyrac is present to inaugurate the assembly. And when he is struck with awe, staring out into the vastness of everywhere and always, Grantaire is there, unfailing and unflinching. (There is a certain clarity gained when one’s soul morphs into an intangible zeitgeist, and now that he has knowledge of the infinite, Enjolras can permit himself to reciprocate Grantaire’s devotion.)

He isn’t always sublime. There are times when he is the most mundane thing in the world. He is the iron at the core of those who know what Thoreau meant about quiet desperation, and he is the soft hands of those who spend their lives making desperation that much less quiet. He is the light that breaks on a better day, brighter with each sunrise until one distant morning when the night will have no room to seep back in. Then, Enjolras will know peace through oblivion.

But now, and for all visible eternity, he is the song that echoes from the stars.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “Do not stand by my grave and weep” by Mary Elizabeth Frye, which also partially inspired this fic.
> 
> [Here's my Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/radiance-of-the-future)


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